The Human stack is a stack of data points that I believe will act as a better Northstar in making decisions for hiring or promoting a Talent. How these attributes interplay with each other to outperform the conventional wisdom of “No. of years of experience” is a very interesting study that I would like to present to you.
Let me start off with an example:-
Mr.Startup Founder has got his Product Market Fit and is looking to hire a super talent to get started with his Sales Team. It's a SaaS product and he is keen to get someone with a prior network of relevant connections in the market. As with any other founder, he starts looking around in his own friends' and ex-colleagues network first. While he starts searching, he wonders if connecting to the potential customers is the only criterion, especially since he is starting off the sales department almost from scratch. Of course, he has put on an enterprise salesman cap with beta clients. Now he starts decoding what elements in him got the beta clients and his success to date.to help him create a cookie cutter for a potential Head of Sales.
1. Skill-set - Though he has developed the product himself and focuses on the technical side of the product, he has taken 2 courses on “Consultative Sales”. This has given him the confidence to “sell” the product that he has developed
2. Behavior Orientation - Mr. Startup Founder is a very detail-oriented individual and he does deep research on the topic before being confident in speaking about the same. This sometimes becomes a hindrance when he is speaking with a potential customer. With so many use cases still to be discovered in the early stage, there are hiccups in conversations and commitments. His co-founder, who is a natural sales guy, often takes a positive approach and takes calculated risks, and advises the Founder to do the same. Now this is a behavioral drive that needs to change to be a more effective salesman in this context.
We have got the founder to tune his specific identified behavioral trait, also he has picked up selling skills. Now, is this all that one needs to be successful in his Sales endeavor?
3. Core values -Let’s talk about the organization he is building. He is building a SaaS platform for everyone to donate towards social causes. The Founder’s vision is to build an equal society, hence the value of treating everyone equally is very key, and respecting every individual’s profession becomes paramount. How does this translate to the sales process? The founder would not look for just right behaviors and skill sets for his sales team - he needs someone who relates to this cause, who demonstrates the value of equality, else no customer is going to relate to “him”
This interlinking journey that the data makes us take helps us understand that just having skills is not sufficient. We need to identify talent across all 3 elements to look for a fitment. And, Let's not forget the element of “Cognitive Strength” which ascertains how quickly the talent can get aligned to these 3 elements, therefore fitting the role faster, cause at Pieworks ‘perfect-perfect’ fit is a farce!
Now how does our cliche “years of experience” matter in this context? write to us at rohan@pieworks.in and let’s decode this for you.